Dead in a ditch.

Now that the opposition isn’t playing ball until a no-deal Brexit is very firmly off the table, the options for Boris Johnson are looking increasingly limited.

First published in September 2019.

Yesterday afternoon there were yet more steps in the clownshoes of British politics. Lyin’ Bastert Johnson gave a speech in front of massed ranks of polis. It was like Police Academy 6 when the franchise had gone long past any pretence at comedy, only not as funny. LBJ fancies himself as the modern incarnation of Churchill, he’s really more Captain Mainwaring. Only when Captain Mainwaring makes us laugh it’s because the scriptwriters did it on purpose.

Police Academy 6.

LBJ sounded as incoherent and rambling as his new bestie Donald Trump, leading many to wonder whether the polis ought to arrest him for being drunk in charge of Brexit. Because if that’s not a thing it should be. He was so incoherent that when he met US Vice-President Mike Pence, Pence was left wondering if he’d gone to the White House by mistake. The speech was so bad that at the end of it there was an announcement on the TV screen for a helpline: “If you have been affected by any of the issues in this programme …” And 60 million people tried to call it.

YouTube - The Guardian

Obviously winging it, it was equally obvious that this is a man who is completely out of his depth. This is what happens when you surrender control of the UK to a tiny self-selecting group who judge one another on their poshness. He’s only had to deal with the Commons for a few days and he’s already lost his majority, lost control of the Brexit process, been refused an early General Election, and been stabbed in the back by his own brother.

This is a man who has just realised that the job that he’s been scheming for for so long isn’t just another opportunity to exercise his own privilege and entitlement. He’s actually got to work. That’s not how it played out in his imagination when he was daydreaming of being world king. He’s rapidly discovering that he’s got something important in common with Gordie Broon. His only real talent lay in scheming to get the top job, not actually in doing the top job once he’d got it. Although even Gordie Broon managed to last three years as Prime Minister, LBJ will be lucky to last another three weeks.

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom told the assembled press, “Waaaffaah waugh fnaugh fnaugh waugh Pericles waaaffaah.” And that’s a direct quote. He wifflewaffled on at such length that he even managed to make a poliswummin sick to her stomach in a literal and not a metaphorical way, something that he’s been successfully doing to the whole of Scotland for months now.

YouTube - Voice of America

The highlight of the speech was when he averred that he would rather be dead in a ditch than ask the EU for an extension to Article 50 and half of the UK went to themselves, “Oh! Is that an option? Is it too late to add that to the bill? At last an idea from Boris Johnson that we can all get behind.” And sparked off a wave of enthusiasm for politics that hasn’t been seen since the Scottish independence referendum.

Well, I say it was a highlight. It was a highlight in the exact same way as it was a highlight when Willam threw up on stage during an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race. We were all talking about it, but for all the wrong reasons. Now LBJ has effectively just vomited all over his chances of getting the opposition parties to agree to a General Election.

YouTube - The Guardian

It was quite an Orwellian image. There he was, the unelected Prime Minister of the UK, standing in front of a phalanx of uniformed polis, saying that he’d be prepared to break the law. All that was needed was for the polis to be in riot gear and we’d be right into Hunger Games territory. And people are still saying that Dominic Cummings is a genius at political strategising.

The bill that was passed by the Commons on Wednesday obliges the Prime Minister to ask the EU for an extension to Brexit. The bill which then got passed by the Lords that night after the Government threw in the towel and abandoned its efforts to get pro-Brexit peers to filibuster the bill. Possibly they threw in the towel because that towel was needed to clean up after LBJ vomited all over the constitution.

Anyway, having passed successfully through the Commons and the Lords, the bill is due to be signed into law by Liz at Balmoral on Monday. That means that the Prime Minister will have a legal obligation to ask the EU for an extension to Article 50. It is no longer a matter of political choice. It’s the law. And could be quoted as such by Adam IT’S THE LAW Tomkins. If LBJ is not actually dead in a ditch by the time of the EU Summit on 17 October, although quite possibly Dominic Cummings could help him with that, he will have no option but to either ask for an extension, or resign as Prime Minister.

Now the opposition parties have another motive for refusing a General Election until after the EU Summit meeting and a request for an extension to Article 50. If they continue to refuse him his wish for an early election, they can force him to have to choose between lying dead in a ditch, resigning, or asking the EU for an extension.

It seems clear now that the Government and its, ahem, genius advisor hadn’t actually counted on the opposition parties refusing an early General Election. The plan had been to provoke them into voting down the Government, and then LBJ could go to the polls saying that he wanted to deliver Brexit but those pesky remainer MPs were standing in his way, vir maximus populi that he is. That’s Latin for great man of the people, because bloggers who went to comprehensives in North Lanarkshire can do Classical too. He would have been homo maximus populi, but that’s a trigger for Mike Pence.

Now that the opposition isn’t playing ball until a no-deal Brexit is very firmly off the table, the options for the great strategist are looking increasingly limited. LBJ’s and Dumb Cummings’s big mistake was to think that the opposition parties were just as egoist as they are themselves. Which admittedly, given that we’re talking about Westminster politicians here, wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. All that’s left is to keep calling Jeremy Corbyn a big girl’s blouse. That’s what counts for a British Government strategy these days. There’s yer mother of parliaments for you.

That ditch must be looking ever more attractive.🔷

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[This piece was originally published on the Wee Ginger Dug Blog and re-published in PMP Magazine on 6 September 2019, with the author’s consent. | The author writes in a personal capacity.]

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